An investigator fills out paperwork as more law enforcement congregate in the background around a silver Nissan Sentra belonging to Jody Wilson, owner of the Starlight Cafe on Roswell Street on the Square. Wilson’s car was towed away and searched Tuesday about 2 p.m. (Staff/Leo Hohmann)

CANTON — A Woodstock man was arrested Tuesday afternoon and charged in a bomb threat called into Cobb County 911 Tuesday morning threatening both the Cherokee and Cobb courthouses.

Jody John Wilson, 45, of Woodstock, was picked up at his restaurant in Marietta and taken in for questioning by the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office. He later was charged with 13 counts in the two counties, police said.

Wilson is accused of calling in a similar bomb threat on both courthouses in January, said Lt. Jay Baker, spokesman for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office.

Baker said detectives believe his motive for the threats may have been that county foreclosures were sold on the courthouse steps Tuesday.

“It appears that Wilson’s Cherokee County home was in foreclosure and was scheduled to be sold on the courthouse steps,” Baker said. “Detectives believe that was the motive of the bomb threats.”

Wilson, who owns the Starlight Cafe in Marietta where he was picked up by police, is charged in Cherokee County with two counts of transmitting a false public alarm, two counts of preventing or disrupting lawful meetings, gatherings, or processions, two counts of intimidation or injury of grand or petit or court officer and two counts of terroristic threats or acts, Baker said.

He was also charged with similar charges by the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office, Nancy Bodiford, spokeswoman for the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office, said in a news release.

In Cobb, he is charged with one count of the same charges as in Cherokee County, with an additional charge of making false statements in writing, Bodiford said.

Cherokee County 911 received a call from the emergency call center in Cobb County just after 11 a.m. notifying them of the call threatening courthouses in both counties, Baker said.

Tuesday’s threat on Cherokee and Cobb court facilities is the third in recent months to be called in to Cobb County.

All three of the threats were made on the first Tuesday of each month, when home foreclosures are sold at each courthouse.

More than 40 people were forced from the Historic Cherokee Courthouse and the Cherokee County Justice Center in downtown Canton and waited until the centers were reopened about 12:30 p.m.

After a search of the court facilities in Cherokee and Cobb, which yielded no threatening devices, business resumed as usual.

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